The brake pads on the front disks of my 97 se seem to always be in contact with the rotors. There is some resistance when I roll the wheels by hand when the vehicle is lifted. My rear wheels, however, roll freely. I would assume that it should be the same freedom of rotation both front and rear. Is this more likely a caliper or master cylinder issue? There are no actual problems with brakeing, only in the complete release of the pads.

 

The front wheels are the drive wheels, which means they are connected to the driveshafts. That will create more resistance.

 

You will have to determine if the resistance is due to the axles or the brakes dragging.

You may want to remove the slide pins on the calipers and coat them with some high temp bearing grease. The top one has a rubber seal at the end, while the bottom one doesn't.

 

While a minor amount of the resistance does come from the drive axle my inquiry stems from that of the pads on the the rotors, which rest on the rotors without pedal application. Not only can I feel the additional resistance but it is visabley and audibly present. I was considering a caliper rebuild to resolve the return issue and hoping it wasn't the master cylinder. I will try greaseing the pins, and hope that is all I'll need to do. Thanks for the suggestion PAhonda.

 

I'm with Chris... First thing, don't go as far as rebuilding the caliper. Just remove the caliper from the caliper bracket, & make sure the slide pins aren't sticking.

Then make sure the pads aren't wedged tight in the caliper bracket. Sometimes I have to file away some paint on the pads backing plates, where they go into the caliper bracket. They should move OK, not rattling-loose, but certainly they should be able to slide in & out nicely.